Why Are We So Sensitive About Being Sensitive? - Feeling empathy, energy and emotion keenly is not a failing - it can be your strength and your superpower, discovers Yasmina Floyer

All of us are sensitive - it is the very nature of being human. However, as with most behavioural characteristics, it exists on a scale. Jenn Granneman, founder of the world's largest community for introverts and co-author, along with Andre Sólo, of Sensitive (Penguin, £10.99), tells me about the characteristics of someone who is highly sensitive: 'Simply put, if you're a highly sensitive person, your body and mind respond more to the world around you. You respond more to heartbreak, pain, and loss - but you also respond more to beauty, new ideas, and joy. You're more affected by everything around you, but you also draw more from these experiences.

- By Yasmina Floyer

When I watch TV, I prefer to have the adverts muted. The lights in my home must give off a soft buttery glow, not the sterile, white glare of other bulbs, or else I just can't relax. I can write perfectly well to the thrash of a double-bass drum pumping through my headphones, but the incessant flutter of a pen being clicked will completely undo me. People can be tricky for me, too, because I am more porous than average; there are those I cannot stand to be around because their energy seeps in, recalibrating my emotions for the worse and others whose connection I crave because they fill me up with so much light.

I just have high levels of empathy, I tell myself.

I'm very particular when it comes to my home and my clothes - but aren't we all? I'm just so used to working on my own, that's why I really feel it when I'm around others, you know? Anything but admit to myself that the characteristics I've shared here (and many more!) point firmly to my being a highly sensitive person. So, why have I struggled for so long to come to terms with this? Frankly, it's because we make a values-based judgment on traits such as sensitivity, deeming it to be a weakness a hindrance that we must strive to overcome. But what if we have this all wrong? As uncomfortable as it may be at times, what if our sensitivity is, in fact, a strength?